It was during my college years that I saw the Big Lebowski for the first time. Within days, my friends and I were calling each other “dude”. Living in Turkey, despite English-speaking classes, the word “dude” entered our lives because of this movie. Even now, wherever someone asks: what’s the big deal with the Big Lebowski? A part of me […]
In 1911, Frederick Winslow Taylor published The Principles of Scientific Management and helped cement one of management’s oldest instincts. In simple terms, break work into measurable units, optimize for efficiency, and add labor when output falls behind. More than a century later, we still make the same category error. We confuse software planning with arithmetic. Multiply headcount by weeks. Voilà, […]
When I was young, I worked in carpentry during the summers. Summer was busy. New buildings had to go up. Stables needed repairs. Barns needed extensions. Sheds had to be built out in the fields. Demand was high. Our bottleneck was capacity. We had one saw, and one person could run it at a time. Yes, we could extend the […]
A few years ago, my father decided to build a house in the village. On the surface, it was easy to like the idea. A quiet place. A porch. A garden. Somewhere to disappear for a while. Perhaps, a retirement home one day. My sisters and I got excited quickly. We talked about how the house should look, what each […]
Torres del Paine was easily one of the hardest and most rewarding hiking trips I have ever done. From the outside, it looks like one of those perfect dream adventures. Jagged towers, blue lakes, glaciers, open valleys, dramatic Patagonia weather. All of that is true. But what does not fully come across in the photos is how serious the commitment […]